Born in Buffalo (Go Bills!) and a '92 alum of Syracuse University, after completing Toyota's "management trainee" program I immediately quit to write my first book. Eight published books later, I am startled that an institution like Forbes would allow me to write for them.
My books include the novels "Sellout" and "Wink" and several educational titles (subjects varying from drug abuse and its impact on society, a historical look at domestic spying, and a biography of Bill Gates) as well as "Tested XX" - the bestselling history of my rather inbred family, which also happens to be America's oldest family of knife-makers, the infamous Case clan.
Having just completed a hyper-creative documentary project "Or Bust" - making 150 mini-documentaries in under two years, spanning 50,000+ miles - I have never felt so inspired or hopeful for a troubled country. This blog is my attempt to uncover the little stories of people with big dreams, while also exposing those who make the American dream seem so unattainable. Enjoy these posts and, please, share with others, as well as your candid insights.

The Militarizing of Local Police

The Pentagon spends nearly $23 billion annually on rust. Seriously, corrosion costs American taxpayers more than Canada or South Korea spend on defense, total. This gem plucked from our bloated budgets is ripe pickings for Boeing and other contractors eager to offset promised cuts by former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, yet the Pentagon’s “proposed savings” of $78 billion over five years will be dwarfed by $114.5 billion in corrosion costs alone over the same period. Rust never sleeps…

#1 on Santa's list for local police departments: The BearCat G3

Aging aircraft carriers, jets and machinery aside, more gifts from the military industrial complex will soon be hitting your neighborhood and tax bill. Weighing-in at 16,000 pounds with a maximum speed of 80mph, the BearCat G3 is Batman’s dream, able to withstand a barrage of bullets while transporting 10 officers, and #1 on local police wish lists for Santa. Never mind the $190,000 starting price tag (the BearCat is comfortably equipped for around $300,000) and acute maintenance costs, no police force will feel fully capable without this toy, err armored response vehicle.

Thank Department of Homeland Security grants of $3 billion per year and drug busts for such extravagant spending by local police departments. Items such as BearCats are deemed “necessary tools” to quality for federal grants (just cite disaster response or crime fighting to ensure they are covered by assorted programs) while federal law says that money from drug seizures can’t be spent on worn-out patrol cars and departmental operating costs, so big-ticket and otherwise cost-prohibitive items become no-brainers.

What is equally mind-boggling is the reality that crime rates have been dropping year-to-year for well over a decade. Los Angeles hasn’t seen so few homicides since the 1960s. So, in justifying purchases like the BearCat, tanks and Predator drones (yep, coming to your neighborhood soon, too) and other equipment designed for battle instead of keeping the peace, law enforcement officials often cite a single instance, say the sniper in Tyler, Texas, last October who killed his neighbor, so the BearCat was brought in, taking at least 35 rounds from an AK-47, until a police sniper took out the gunman. You will hear that story a lot; or maybe how a similar vehicle was used to disperse protesters downtown, “Occupy” as another excuse for the militarization of local law enforcement.

“I would cut some sworn positions to allow for the acquisition and/or maintenance of equipment/technology.” appears on a 2010 poll done by PERF, Police Executive Research Forum — The response: 6% agree while 80% disagree. Believe it or not, budget cuts impact law enforcement as well, and these lean times have forced some tough choices: 51% of police departments had budgets cuts while 58% eliminated or reduced salary increases; there’s a 3% decrease in sworn officers employed nationwide. This equates to 47% of departments reducing services: 8% no longer respond to minor vehicle thefts while 9% ignore burglar alarms. Doing less with less, most police officials would rather have officers on the street than expensive equipment.

The pepper-spraying of "Occupy" protesters at UC Davis has inspired myriad memes.

In response, university and campus security officers have been given authority and armaments equal to local police to make-up for service shortfalls, with the lack of accountability and training most apparent during the recent pepper spraying of peaceful protesters by a UC Davis campus security guard. In the age of lower crime across the board and tighter budgets – appropriately, due to better crime-prevention techniques, brains over brawn – why are police departments driving military-grade vehicles and employing costly Predator drones?

During the crackdown on “Occupy” protesters recently, police appeared like soldiers – armed with automatic weapons, Tasers, pepper spray, riot gear et al – but military personnel have been prohibited from performing domestic law enforcement since 1878. A holdover from Reconstruction when U.S. Army troops occupied Confederate states after the Civil War, the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 requires an act of Congress or the Constitution to allow the Army (which includes the Air Force) to “maintain law and order” with state law enforcement or local police.

Under the guise of the “War on Drugs” (a $15 billion federal budget item, and a minimal figure, given clandestine military operations in Mexico and throughout South America) the Posse Comitatus Act has been gutted. President Reagan’s Military Cooperation with Law Enforcement Act of 1981 then George W. Bush’s shortsighted but broad-sweeping powers enacted post-9-11 have blurred the line between domestic policing and military action. Bill Clinton doesn’t get off clean, either, with 1.2 million military items given to law enforcement under his administration, including 3,800 M-16s, 185 M-14s, 73 grenade launchers and 112 armored personnel carriers. While the general sentiment that U.S. troops shouldn’t be patrolling the streets of America still holds somewhat true, their weapons are another matter entirely.

And they are receiving a warm welcome. 50 states, 17,000+ federal, state and local agencies have accepted more than $2.6 billion in donated military equipment so far this year, as revealed by the Pentagon’s Paul Stockton at a House Homeland Security Committee panel. In response to the drawdown of American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, much equipment is now available – And being “donated” for domestic law enforcement. Including $600 million in cash, this equipment and funding are intended for all-inclusive counter-narcotics and -terrorism enforcement activities.

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I agree with your comment about being surprised that Forbes would let you write for them. Your take on this piece was an indictment of the capitalists Forbes is so proud of. You should suggest a buy-back program to Boeing and the like as a just way of dealing with surplus military gear.

Aren’t alternative views great? I doubt Boeing wants any buy-back program, but its investors – those who Forbes serves – should be curious about the impact and products that they and we underwrite. Appreciated, Brad

You wrote: “Believe it or not, budget cuts impact law enforcement as well, and these lean times have forced some tough choices: 51% of police departments had budgets cuts while 58% eliminated or reduced salary increases; there’s a 3% decrease in sworn officers employed nationwide. This equates to 47% of departments reducing services: 8% no longer respond to minor vehicle thefts while 9% ignore burglar alarms.”

“America has spent trillions on war over the past ten years. Whether we like it or not, the military industry has been one beacon of hope for our economy over that same period, including hundreds of thousands of jobs and billions in exports.”

The military-industrial complex as America’s “Beacon of Hope?” No kidding?

Just for the sake of argument and simple arithmetic, let’s say the author’s “hundreds of thousands of jobs” were actually one million jobs. Now, just for sport, let us imagine we have only spent one trillion dollars on war in the last 10 years (a gross underestimation even by official accounts).

So how did the Beacon of Hope (sometimes known as military Keynesianism) uplift the American people “whether we like it or not?” (curious phrase for an ostensible democracy).

$1,000,000,000,000.00 / 1,000,000 jobs = $1,000,000.00

Q: Given — at the very, very minimum, according to this writer’s own words — the American public took on a million dollars of long-term debt at interest for every single war-related job that obligation created, and given that current US annual median household income is less than $60,000.00, what sane leadership would spend over16 times that amount to create a single job?

A: No sane leadership would do so.

Eisenhower told us in 1953:

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

This world in arms is not spending money alone.

It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.

It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.

It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement.

We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.

We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.

This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”

But now, thanks to Forbes, we know Ike was just joking (what did Ike know about the cost of war, anyway?). Finally, we can now sigh in relief to know that war-spending is actually a Beacon of Hope for us all, not humanity crucified.

And the real kicker here is the US unemployment rate at the time Eisenhower made this speech: 2.5%, the lowest US unemployment rate ever recorded. True, war spending in 1953 was elevated because of Korea. But even though unemployment was low, no doubt partly because of war spending, Eisenhower still came out for slashing war spending. Why? Because it was the right thing to do. Ike had the character to say so and the intelligence to understand that unnecessary military spending craters the long term economy of any nation.

If you hear a rumbling sound it’s the former five-star general, Supreme Head Allied Expeditionary Force, rolling over in his grave after having somehow caught wind of this article.

Note: In 2014 dollars, 1953 military spending was around $526B as opposed to current $832B, and we had a large, hot war in progress in Asia at the time. So we are now spending about 37% more on military than in 1953, but report an (highly dubious) unemployment rate of 6.6%, whereas the much lower 1953 spending resulted in 2.5% unemployment — which is practically below what even then was considered “full employment.” Hard to make a case for military Keynesianism with this data.